Bruins: Young defense coming of age

No team has ever won the Stanley Cup with this much youth and inexperience in its defensive top four, and four of six Boston Bruins defensemen have just begun their first full NHL playoff season.

Comment

By Mick Colageo

capecodtimes.com

By Mick Colageo

Posted Apr. 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM

By Mick Colageo

Posted Apr. 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

No team has ever won the Stanley Cup with this much youth and inexperience in its defensive top four, and four of six Boston Bruins defensemen have just begun their first full NHL playoff season.

Given the extraordinary challenge, I thought Detroit was the right opponent to exploit this and cut this playoff run short, but I was obviously wrong.

How wrong?

As convincing as the Bruins looked in eliminating the Red Wings in five games, let's not forget that Tuukka Rask had to stop Gustav Nyquist on a clean breakaway in the opening minute of overtime in Thursday's Game 4.

Had Rask not made the save, Saturday's matinee would have been played on the pins and needles of a best-of-three scenario.

Thanks to Rask, it was not.

Rask is a member of the Bruins so that counts, too.

It's not as if the goalie's performance falls under the category of a rainy day or a sink hole. He is part of it, and I overestimated Detroit's potential to make him a victim of Boston's back-end youth. I overestimated the impact that young Detroit forwards like Nyquist and Tomas Tatar could have on this series.

Backboned by Rask, the Bruins made the young players that gave the Red Wings their push to the playoffs look younger than Boston's young defensemen.

Matt Bartkowski, thrust into the top four by Dennis Seidenberg's Dec. 27 knee injury, whistles his way through the graveyard of adventurous shifts. But he is a great straight-line skater, sturdy in battle and – this is of paramount importance – shrugs off his mistakes, and brings an unfettered self-banging and crashing into the next challenge.

Dougie Hamilton, who skates in the top pairing opposite captain Zdeno Chara, is showing more moxie on the ice with each passing game.

A tad bigger and stronger than last year, the rangy defenseman's instincts for the game were easy to detect from day one. The one immediate upside of Seidenberg's absence is he is much better across from Chara. Hamilton and Seidenberg did not gel as a pairing.

Hamilton has become a force in all three zones and at 20 years old is far ahead of career schedule.

Bobby Orr says in his book “Orr: My Story” that he is grateful to every coach and mentor who encouraged to play the game creatively and aggressively. But one can easily get the wrong idea about No. 4 from highlight reels of him turning four opponents into hapless pylons before spoon feeding Phil Esposito an easy tap-in.

The truth is Orr was a fierce competitor who engaged the NHL with a respect that held him to a rush up the ice here and an offensive play there. It wasn't until his third season that he really took the puck and ran with it.

Orr grew his game on the job. So did Ray Bourque – from flash-and-dash to two-way beast – and so did Gord Kluzak, whose promising career was unfortunately limited by knee problems to one memorable performance in Boston's first playoff ouster of Montreal in 45 years.

Now it's Hamilton's turn to grow his game right before our eyes.

Last year he was a part-time playoff performer. Now he's a prime-time playoff performer.

By now you know Torey Krug quite well, and no doubt the Red Wings are wishing they didn't let this undrafted Michigan State player sneak out from under their noses.

Krug's ability to keep on creating, keep on coming up with new ways, is simply inspiring. On Saturday, his pass from the Zamboni corner of the rink – what was he doing over there?! – to Patrice Bergeron in the high slot made Chara's go-ahead goal with 3.7 seconds left in the second period possible.

Having saddled himself with the challenge of living up to his incredible siege on Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist in last year's playoffs, Krug keeps delivering.

Kevan Miller – sadly in one dimension – has supplanted Adam McQuaid. With a more anonymous approach – Miller does not smile as he engages his combatants – he has replaced the talent and battle level lost with McQuaid's leg injury.

The support that this youth group has given Chara and Johnny Boychuk is off the grid. It just doesn't work this way in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but the Bruins are making it work.

Can they keep making it work?

Well, each of those kids has five more games of playoff experience now, and that goes on the resumé as the Bruins prepare for a tougher second-round match against archrival Montreal.

Regardless of what happens in the next series, the Bruins deserve everything they get and more, and they've earned what they've gotten to this point.

Mick Colageo covers hockey for The Standard-Times in New Bedford. Contact him at mcolageo@s-t.com and follow on Twitter @Mick Colageo.